Do You Want To Know What We Did To Beat Cancer?

There are lots of trolls attacking Burzynski on the internet.
You obviously have a great antipathy for alternative cancer therapies, so I can see why you would be attracted to them.

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Actually it's not trolls. I didn't include reams of blogs, articles from patients and their family's. I guests that makes me a troll to you. I don't have 'great antipathy for alternative cancer therapies'. I have great antipathy for people who use alternative therapies to make false claims and rip people off.

The study referred to in that link is this one, which found that in the case of invasive breast cancer, biopsies taken by fine-needle aspiration were 1.5 times more likely to result in sentinel node metastases, compared to biopsies taken by excision.

However, what the actual clinical significance of this finding is, it hard to say without looking at a wider context. Needle biopsies may cause tumor seeding 1.5 more than excision biopsies, but given that you will be nuking these tumors with chemotherapy shortly afterwards, it may be that those tumor seeds are quickly wiped out.

Also, since the biopsy gives doctors information about the type of cancer, and thus presumably allows them to tailor the chemotherapy more appropriately, this in itself should increase the cure rate. So any negative effects from needle biopsies need to be weighed against their positive effects.

I don't know the answers to all this, because I have little knowledge about this field, but I do think that you cannot come to any conclusions using the needle biopsy tumor seeding statistics alone. You have to look at the overall picture.

IN any case, it seems that a new technology has been developed that uses radiofrequency pulses to sterilise the needle track and denaturate tumour cells. So in future, needle biopsies may no longer present any risk of tumor seeding.

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Hi Hip,

I have treated breast cancer for more than 25 years and participated in our hospitals tumor board over that span of time. When I perform surgery to remove a breast cancer, I always remove the biopsy tract with an ellipse of normal tissue. This is the standard of care at my hospital. I've never seen a biopsy tract recurrence since the tract is always removed.

My definition of a good doctor is very different than yours. Any doctor who doesn't believe in vaccination in my opinion is a fraud. Let's just say we agree to disagree. Good luck with your approach towards medicine.

I have treated breast cancer for more than 25 years and participated in our hospitals tumor board over that span of time. When I perform surgery to remove a breast cancer, I always remove the biopsy tract with an ellipse of normal tissue. This is the standard of care at my hospital. I've never seen a biopsy tract recurrence since the tract is always removed.

Best,
Gary

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Ah so this is your area of surgical expertise. Very interesting to hear the inside story on this.

The study referred to in that link is this one, which found that in the case of invasive breast cancer, biopsies taken by fine-needle aspiration were 1.5 times more likely to result in sentinel node metastases, compared to biopsies taken by excision.

However, what the actual clinical significance of this finding is, it is hard to say without looking at a wider context. Needle biopsies may cause tumor seeding 1.5 more than excision biopsies, but given that you will be nuking these tumors with chemotherapy shortly afterwards, it may be that those tumor seeds are quickly wiped out.

Also, since the biopsy gives doctors information about the type of cancer, and thus presumably allows them to tailor the chemotherapy more appropriately, this in itself should increase the cure rate. So any negative effects from needle biopsies need to be weighed against their positive effects.

I don't know the answers to all this, because I have little knowledge about this field, but I do think that you cannot come to any conclusions using the needle biopsy tumor seeding statistics alone. You have to look at the overall picture.

In any case, it seems that a new technology has been developed that uses radiofrequency pulses to sterilise the needle track and denaturate tumour cells. So in future, needle biopsies may no longer present any risk of tumor seeding.

The potential benefit of FNAC in suspected liver lesions is the confirmation of suspected metastases, and this may be attained effectively by other investigations with less than 2% of benign lesions misdiagnosed as metastases.

This benefit is outweighed by the risks, including the serious and often fatal complication of needle tract metastasis and the risk of deriving false reassurance from a false negative FNAC result.

Biopsy of liver lesions causes needle tract metastases and should not be

used for diagnosis"

It looks like Sue and Robert made their decision wisely in spite of the Oncologists advice to biopsy the liver, pancreas and stomach.

What irks me big time is that organizations like the Susan G. Komen foundation have become a big business -- raising billions of dollars (one has to PAY to participate in their 'races'), yet in Komen's case, only 16% of what they raise actually goes towards research into what things may be causing cancer.

"With its dozens of races “for the cure” and some 200 corporate partnerships, it may be the most successful charity ever at branding a disease; its relentless marketing has made the pink ribbon one of the most recognized logos of our time. The ribbon has come to symbolize both fear of the disease and the hope it can be defeated. It’s a badge of courage for the afflicted, an expression of solidarity by the concerned. It promises continual progress toward a cure through donations, races, volunteerism. It indicates community. And it offers corporations a seemingly fail-safe way to signal good will toward women, even if, in a practice critics call “pinkwashing,” the products they produce are linked to the disease…"

The OP posted anecdotal evidence of how someone was able to beat cancer (or not) by changing diet. Now we're off to Rife machines, etc. (Go here for discussion of Rife Machines) Perhaps we should focus on wellness, or how to prevent cancer, in the first place, then there would be fewer people with cancer. As long as we focus on cures, we take the stance of being the victim, needing treatment from something outside of ourselves. I'm going to tell a joke, then mention ways we can prevent cancer.

What's the difference between a physician, a surgeon, a psychiatrist, and a pathologist ?

The physician knows everything and does nothing.
The surgeon knows nothing and does everything.
The psychiatrist knows nothing and does nothing.
The pathologist knows everything, but always a week too late.

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We are behaving like the pathologist, and I mean no offense to any doctors, as I love all my doctors.

Perhaps the ideal patient knows everything (how to prevent cancer) and does everything (follows best practices to prevent cancer). Granted, there are cancers for which there is no known cause.

1. Don't use tobacco2. Eat a healthy diet
Although making healthy selections at the grocery store and at mealtime can't guarantee cancer prevention, it might help reduce your risk. Consider these guidelines:

Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Base your diet on fruits, vegetables and other foods from plant sources — such as whole grains and beans.

Limit fat. Eat lighter and leaner by choosing fewer high-fat foods, particularly those from animal sources. High-fat diets tend to be higher in calories and might increase the risk of overweight or obesity — which can, in turn, increase cancer risk.

If you choose to drink alcohol, do so only in moderation. The risk of various types of cancer — including cancer of the breast, colon, lung, kidney and liver — increases with the amount of alcohol you drink and the length of time you've been drinking regularly.

3. Maintain a healthy weight and be physically active.4. Protect yourself from the sun
Skin cancer is one of the most common kinds of cancer — and one of the most preventable.5. Get immunized
Cancer prevention includes protection from certain viral infections. Talk to your doctor about immunization against:

Hepatitis B. Hepatitis B can increase the risk of developing liver cancer. The hepatitis B vaccine is recommended for certain high-risk adults — such as adults who are sexually active but not in a mutually monogamous relationship, people with sexually transmitted infections, intravenous drug users, men who have sex with men, and health care or public safety workers who might be exposed to infected blood or body fluids.

Human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is a sexually transmitted virus that can lead to cervical and other genital cancers as well as squamous cell cancers of the head and neck. The HPV vaccine is available to both men and women age 26 or younger who didn't have the vaccine as adolescents.

6. Avoid risky behaviors

Practice safe sex. Limit your number of sexual partners, and use a condom when you have sex.The more sexual partners you have in your lifetime, the more likely you are to contract a sexually transmitted infection — such as HIV or HPV. People who have HIV or AIDS have a higher risk of cancer of the anus, liver and lung. HPV is most often associated with cervical cancer, but it might also increase the risk of cancer of the anus, penis, throat, vulva and vagina.

Don't share needles. Sharing needles with an infected drug user can lead to HIV, as well as hepatitis B and hepatitis C — which can increase the risk of liver cancer.

7. Get regular medical care
Regular self-exams and screenings for various types of cancers — such as cancer of the skin, colon, prostate, cervix and breast — can increase your chances of discovering cancer early, when treatment is most likely to be successful.

One the subject of cancer causes and cancer prevention: I have often wondered whether the immune evasion techniques used by microbial infections might be able to sufficiently thwart our immune response so that we can no longer fight off any nascent cancers in their initial stages, which then allows these cancer to take hold and grow in size.

Immune evasion is a series of mechanisms used by microorganisms to avoid being destroyed by the immune system. Pretty much every microorganism we can catch has its own cunning immune evasion tactics, which allow it to thwart or outwit our immune response.

For example, coxsackievirus B has a neat little trick it uses to avoid our immune response: when this virus infects our cells, it quickly removes certain proteins from the cell surface, which results in these infected cells becoming invisible to our CD8 T-cell immune responses, and makes these infected cells invulnerable to attack by certain elements of our immune system.† This is one of the ways that coxsackievirus B evades destruction by our immune system.

Since nearly all of us harbor dozens of long term viral, bacterial, fungal or protozoal infections in our bodies, and since all of these microbes will using immune evasion tactics to render our immune system dysfunctional, could these various immune evasion tactics create a background environment in our body which allows incipient cancers to avoid immune detection and destruction at a very early stage, and thus grow larger?

I have not been able to find any evidence to support this idea, apart from the studies which show that particular microbes are capable of causing particular cancers (eg: papillomavirus can cause cervical cancer, and hepatitis B or C can cause liver cancer).

But I am no referring to microbes causing cancer, but rather the idea that the immune evasion mechanisms used by microbes in our body might be weakening our immune system, so that any nascent cancers caused by other means (eg: by sun damage) may not be properly dealt with and destroyed by our immune system.

@Hip, you've outdone yourself! I had to reach way back to the catacombs where memories of Microbiology and Immunology are stored. In today's world, they would be regarded as "vintage," which is kind of a popular thing these days.

I had to imagine a chalkboard lecture of a microbiology professor drawing a human cell with coxsackievirus B inside of it. Essentially, the virus has hijacked the cell (like a real hijack) and will now do whatever it wants with the cell's functions, including the windshield wipers.

Oh heck, I don't know, but also consider this hypothesis: Could the setting (our body) that allows coxsackievirus B or other latent viruses to exist, also be susceptible to cancer anyway?

Even if we found that people who have latent viruses DID get cancer more often, it would be hard to prove cause and effect.

Dr. Moss' work documents the ineffectiveness of chemotherapy on most forms of cancer. However, he is fair in pointing out that there are the following exceptions: Acute Iymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and nonseminomatous testicular cancer. Also, a few very rare forms of cancer, including choriocarcinoma, Wilm's tumor, and retinoblastoma. But all of these account for only 2% to 4% of all cancers occurring in the United States. This leaves some 96% to 98% of other cancers, in which chemotherapy doesn't eliminate the disease. The vast majority of cancers, such as breast, colon, and lung cancer are barely touched by chemotherapy. However, there is another category where chemotherapy has a relatively minor effect -- The most "successful" of these is in Stage 3 ovarian cancer, where chemotherapy appears to extend life by perhaps eighteen months, and small-cell lung cancer in which chemotherapy might offer six more months.

i don't know this man so am taking this at face value.

its not the diet i would have used (stated at the start) and i can only imagine that what worked was not eating junk food and pesticides more so than juices etc. i certainly believe that alot cancer is controllable with diet and environment alone (no personal care and domestic chemicals). i had a friend who died pretty quickly following chemo. i don't rate many of the natural cures for cancer and any success is more likely that the diet is no longer full of real bad stuff.

Alot like the CBT trials we have a different definition of 'cure' 'remission' 'quality of life'. And this is deceitful in just the same way.

From an institution for nutrition -- where is support for this? I can find confirmation for almost any claim on the internet. It,s an older article so surely there is more support. Cherry picking does not really help much.

By the way, if anyone knows of genuine cases of cancers being cured or ameliorated by alternative therapies,
it would be worth reporting the details to the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These are a scientific body, but I understand they are very interested in hearing of genuine alternative cancer treatment accounts.

The research priorities of OCCAM:

• Identifying novel therapeutics in the pharmacopeia of traditional medical systems as defined by the World Health Organization

• Using complementary approaches to improve the therapeutic ratio of standard and investigational anti-cancer therapies

[For]or anyone who knows a well-substantiated case where an alternative cancer treatment was used with good results, then you ought to report it to OCCAM.

An example of a possibly credible alternative cancer treatment is the use of cannabis oil (= cannabis extracts consisting of 50% or more THC and/or CBD).

This article says that lots of reports about the anti-cancer effects of cannabis oil are coming in, along with studies that are also demonstrating these effects, and in the article, Donald Abrams, MD, Chief of Hematology-Oncology at San Francisco General Hospital says that: "Anyone who is saying that they’re seeing people cured of cancer with cannabis oil alone, has a responsibility to report those cases to the NCI’s Office of Cancer and Complementary Medicine."

In this blog article there is an analysis of the Australian paper referred to in your link. The last paragraph of the blog article I thought was interesting:

"While it’s true that chemotherapy decreases a woman’s risk of dying from her breast cancer, the vast majority of women do not individually benefit from chemotherapy. That decrease in risk is based on populations and probabilities. We can’t predict in advance whether chemotherapy will help in an individual patient with an acceptable degree of accuracy, only apply probabilities based on population data.

In order to save that one-third, we have to treat most women, who segregate into three groups:

(1) Those who would have done well without chemotherapy, who are treated unnecessarily;

(2) Those who would do poorly regardless of chemotherapy, who are also treated unnecessarily; and

(3) Those for whom chemotherapy is the difference between life and death.

What would be far more effective (and far more desirable) would to be able to identify in advance which women would do poorly without chemotherapy but are likely to respond to chemotherapy. Fortunately, with the emerging era of genomic medicine, we are finally developing the tools necessary to identify these women. When that happens, we’ll finally be able to make sure that only the women who can be saved by chemotherapy are the women who receive chemotherapy. I’m hoping that day is not too far off."

It turns out that this [the Australian study] is not such an impressive study. Indeed, it appears almost intentionally designed to have left out the very types of cancers for which chemotherapy provides the most benefit, and it uses 5 year survival exclusively, completely neglecting that in some common cancers (such as breast cancer) chemotherapy can prevent late relapses. There were also a lot of inconsistencies and omissions in that leukemias were not included, while leukemia is one type of cancer against which chemotherapy is most efficacious. Indeed, the very technique of lumping all newly diagnosed adult cancers together is guaranteed to obscure benefits of chemotherapy among subgroups by lumping in patients for whom chemotherapy is not even indicated.

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Still, would be nice to have details on how efficacious (or not) chemotherapy is for each different type of cancer, so that patients could decide on whether to undertake chemotherapy or not for their particular cancer.

Still, would be nice to have details on how efficacious (or not) chemotherapy is for each different type of cancer, so that patients could decide on whether to undertake chemotherapy or not for their particular cancer.

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If one day you get cancer and see an oncologist, your choices will be discussed with you and your odds of survival will be discussed with you. No one should be forced into a treatment, since this is your body and there are patients who decline treatments or opt for the palliative option. However the oncologists know what treatment will give you the best chances of survival and disease free life.

From my oncology nurse experience, here are the cancers with the better odds of survival and living free of disease: Hodgkins Lymphoma, testicular cancer, cervical cancer, thyroid cancer.

These cancer are considered chronic illnesses, as you can live with them for many many year, sometimes with long remissions: breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancers, some colon cancers, some lung cancers, Some lymphomas, some leukemias.

The most important things to remember are that early detection and early treatments improve your odds of survival and odds of living a better quality of life. Oncologists know their stuff, they are the best suited to understand the pathology, treatments options. They know what is an agressive cancer and what is a good prognosis and they have lots of experience with 'grey areas'.

Where I worked, oncologists were working on a salary. They had weekly case conferences to discuss complicated patients and journal clubs to discuss the latest research and are flying all around the world to attend or present to cancer conferences. This truly is the best of medicine.